


you found my breaking point (congratulations)

by exhaustedwerewolf



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: AKA the fun period of time where Juno was all on his own with Miasma, Also some medical attention, Angst, Bad Things Happen Bingo, Canon-Typical Violence, Cold-Blooded Torture, Delirious with Pain, Dissociation, Dodgy Religious Symbolism, Electrocution, Exhaustion, Explicit Language, Eye Trauma, Go easy on me I haven't listened to Season 2 yet, Hallucinations, Hurt No Comfort, Juno Steel Needs a Hug, Least because who knows how that shit works on Mars, Non-Graphic Torture, One Shot, Other, POV Second Person, Post-Episode: s01e16-17 Peter Nureyev and the Angel of Brahma, Pre-Episode: s01e18 Juno Steel and the Final Resting Place, This is borderline free verse I have NO idea what's going on, Unconsciousness, just take it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-28 06:55:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17178053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exhaustedwerewolf/pseuds/exhaustedwerewolf
Summary: It hurts too much to wonder if He's coming back.





	you found my breaking point (congratulations)

**Author's Note:**

> title taken from 'heel turn 2' by the mountain goats. hope you enjoy!

In the beginning, there was nothing, and them some bastard yelled for the lights to be turned on or something.

In the end, there was the sound of His receding footsteps.

And then there was nothing again.

Just the sharp taste of blood. Just the ashy taste of stone.

Just the piercing voice of your new best friend; the searing agony that made you long for so many hangovers, when you had the strength of mind to long for anything.

You’d thought for a while that He would come back.

God, it had been so much easier to fight it, with someone there to stifle your screams for. Choking them back the next day/cycle/nightmare for the masks; at some point, it hadn’t seemed to matter. You forgot that it was supposed to matter.

You cry yourself hoarse. You cry yourself voiceless. None of them stop.

None of it stops.

With Him gone they’d tried the electricity out on you, but that hadn’t worked out too hot for them.

 _Y_ _our pain or His pain?-_ a very different question to;

_This pain or that pain?_

This one Miasma asks you over and over and over, her fingers clawlike on the dial.

The lightning strike within, your nerves left blackened and charred, or you melted from the inside out, your mind turned to molten lava, magma leaking out of your mouth and ears and eyes?

They gave up on the shock machine when they realised you were just hanging there, brain-dead and spasming. One of Galvani’s rats.

You are trying your hardest, now, to keep one half-lidded eye open, because if you let it fall closed the next you know an assistant’s hands will be on you again and you’ll be dragged back, all the kicking and screaming strictly metaphorical by now.

Then you are wondering, your vision swallowed by the colourless silhouette you know intimately as the looming spectre of unconsciousness, sleep’s always-uninvited, shittier couisin, if you can exhaust yourself to death before they get here.

That’s supposed to work on lab rats, too.

Your eye- well, your eye only hurts when you breathe.

Or when you hold your breath.

Or when you forget that you are breathing altogether, remember only that you are in your apartment, the cell floor digging into your back, and you are drinking in His extraplanetary perfume. You are back in the Kanagawa’s closet, tongueless from swallowing Rita’s crappy coffee too quick, ignoring your brother’s breaths echoing off the walls, ignoring the skittering shadows of the lab rats.

It’s like someone’s forced a shattered mirror down your throat, and now you’re watching the footage from one of those capsule cameras. The images come to you in shards; sharp and inverted and slick with your own gore. You lie there still, sedated, too sick out of your mind to make heads or tails of your own insides.

You’re so goddamn tired of the pounding of this pulse.

The movements of your heart with Him; those were yours.

This. Thuds.

Like. So. Many. Kicks. To. The. Chest.

Inside you it’s just void and black blood and this goes on and on and on. You are hurting and all you are is hurt, and the hurt swells to fill the space, and you do not know where you, the hurt, ends and where the cell begins.

You will-

You are probably going to-

Almost definitely, you’re gonna-

Die-

(Alone.)

Down here.

The body that belonged to Juno Steel bears all the weight of Mars, of the planets, of the Sun. There is only blood and stone and infinite gravity.

And then, there is

 

 

 

nothing.


End file.
